Source
https://hopecohousing.org/why-cohousing-is-good-for-people-and-communities-the-evidence-2/ — original source (opens in a new tab; the file is not redistributed)
Summary
Dr Mark K Smith’s Why Cohousing Is Good for People and Communities — The Evidence (2024) is a 15-page grey-literature evidence review prepared for Hope Cohousing (UK). Updated from a 2022 original, it synthesises published academic and evaluation literature across five claim areas: (1) cohousing reduces social isolation and loneliness; (2) fosters agency, mutual aid, and wellbeing; (3) adds to affordable and sustainable housing supply; (4) strengthens local community life and civic participation; (5) improves health outcomes. The primary cited academic sources include Carrere et al. 2020 (=LIT_011), West et al. 2024 (CHIC report), Ruiu 2016, Hudson et al. 2021, Törnqvist 2019, and Holt-Lunstad’s loneliness-mortality meta-analyses. The document carries no original data and is explicitly advocacy-oriented — prepared to support cohousing project funding pitches. UK projects foregrounded: OWCH (25 flats, London), Bridport Cohousing (53 homes, 26 social rent), LILAC (Leeds, mutual home ownership). No NZ content.
Key thesis insights
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“Individualized collectivism” as the cohousing value proposition — Törnqvist (2019) frames cohousing as a model where residents retain private space and autonomous lifestyles while choosing their depth of community engagement. The thesis can use this concept to explain why cohousing attracts a different cohort than commune-style intentional communities: residents opt into collective life rather than surrendering individual autonomy. The privacy-community balance is a design feature, not a design failure. OT_016
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Bonding and bridging social capital simultaneously — Ruiu (2016) found cohousing builds both bonding capital (internal community trust and reciprocity) and bridging capital (connections to the surrounding neighbourhood and civic life). This addresses the standard critique that intentional communities are insular and socially exclusive: evidence suggests the opposite — cohousing residents participate more in external civic structures, not less. OT_016
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Loneliness as a public health risk equivalent to heavy smoking — Holt-Lunstad (cited via Cacioppo 2013 and the CHIC report) quantifies social isolation as equivalent in mortality risk to smoking 15 cigarettes per day. The thesis can invoke this figure in the context of basic needs and social connection to justify designing community housing models that structurally reduce isolation — not as a lifestyle preference but as a measurable health intervention. OT_016
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Mixed-tenure cohousing as affordable housing supply mechanism — Bridport Cohousing (53 homes: 26 social rent + 27 low-impact eco-homes) and LILAC’s mutual home ownership model demonstrate that cohousing can deliver social housing at scale within a cooperative structure, not just market-rate community living. The thesis can use these UK examples as comparators when assessing why NZ cohousing has not achieved the same scale, pointing back to the institutional pathway asymmetry documented in OT_015 (Māori papakāinga) and OT_010 (alternative tenure). OT_016
Research targets
Documents to retrieve
- RT_085 (doc) — RESOLVED → OT_149. West, K., et al. (2024) — CHIC report on cohousing health and wellbeing evidence. Retrieved and ingested: it is primary qualitative case-study research (63 interviews, 12 focus groups across six English communities), not the “systematic evidence synthesis” implied here — but it delivers the more rigorous cohousing/care evidence sought behind this Smith (2024) advocacy paper.
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